


feathers in our bed

by doubtthestars



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, F/M, Futbal Mini-Bang, M/M, Mythology References, Polyamory, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, inspired by Hancock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-18
Updated: 2015-03-18
Packaged: 2018-03-18 10:34:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3566519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doubtthestars/pseuds/doubtthestars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They are not angels or deities fallen from the sky to help humanity, but Jerome had always had a soft spot for suffering. Robert had been the unyielding one, the one that let people destroy themselves because it will happen time and time again. It wasn't that he didn't care or Jerome cared too much, it's just the way it worked. They balanced each other.</p><p>Robert and Jerome are meant for each other but have to be apart and Anna is the human that saves them both.</p>
            </blockquote>





	feathers in our bed

**Author's Note:**

> _I live my life in growing circles_  
>  which ring out over the things around me.  
> Perhaps I'll never finish the last,  
> but that's what I'm going to try.
> 
> _I'm circling around God, around the ancient tower,_  
>  and I've been circling for thousands of years;  
> and I still don't know: am I a falcon, a storm  
> or a great song.
> 
> \--The Book of Hours, Rainer Maria Rilke

**"So you think that people who suffer together would be more connected than people who were content? Suppose if you'd been through something like, if you'd been through something catastrophic, been through like a storm or an earthquake together or something horrendous, it would bring you closer together? But what if they are creating the disaster within themselves?"**

**\--Florence + The Machine, What Kind of Man**

 

They are not angels or deities fallen from the sky to help humanity, but Jerome had always had a soft spot for suffering. Robert had been the unyielding one, the one that let people destroy themselves because it will happen time and time again. It wasn't that he didn't care or Jerome cared too much, it's just the way it worked. They balanced each other with thought and deed.

The first name Robert remembers is Mikhael. He doesn't know when or where he is, but it is hot, the earth cracked beneath his bare feet and clothes are almost an afterthought. He was strong, stronger than anybody else and he could perform miracles.

He remembers Jerome then Samuel, and when they meet, the skies turned dark. It rains for an eon. He cannot save the flooded crops and the drowned bodies, but Samuel tries and shakes him with rough edges clipping his voice, a language he doesn't remember how to speak anymore.

_"We must, we must help."_

Mikhael refuses, because it is out of their hands. It is in their god's hands. The rain will stop when it will and no sooner. Samuel weeps over the children and elderly and leaves the woven mat they lay on in the middle of the night. He is out in the swollen fields, praying and dancing and Mikhael watches with clenched fists.

He looks away before the flash of lightning hits Samuel. Then it is he who is running and shouting and pleading. He is barely breathing when the healers cover him with salves for the burns, but Samuel will always have the pattern of starbursts seared into his skin. Mikhael doesn't visit because when he does, Samuel gets worse.

He leaves for another village, other people, hoping Samuel will get better without him there. His miracles are useless and he is angry at God because he understands now. They were two of a kind but they were meant to be apart.

Robert is always the first to leave, but Jerome always follows.

*

Anna doesn't say anything about his scars and he cannot tell her how he got them without sounding like a lunatic. She assumes and he lets her. He is painfully honest about anything and everything else. Robert is very straight-forward, carries himself like he is a danger to everyone around him and Anna tries her best to love him as he is, instead of what he was.

She thinks of him as a victim, but Robert dissuades her of that notion. He is a victim of circumstance like any other being. He just wears it different, has pieces that others don't. He doesn't get sick and he doesn't feel it when the couch leg is dropped on his toe in the move to another house.

Robert Lewandowski doesn't have any family. There are no well-wishers from his side at the wedding but mutual friends divvy up the space, feeling sorry for the man. What a joyous occasion to be ruined be empty seats.

He doesn't remember his parents, doesn't quite know if he had any or if he had even grown into this skin, into this body. Robert can't remember being young because he has felt old for too long. Sometimes, he entertains the thought of having some sort of Athenian birth, sprung fully-formed from some cosmic well that he could call father.

It is partially why he marries Anna, because she reminds him that he is not just some sort of removed being watching the world burn. She makes him feel better and hopeful, more so than saving a life in a wailing ambulance or watching a newborn find its way into the world.

He tries not to flinch when the priest takes their hands as a friendly afterthought to the ceremony, presenting them as wife and husband. Robert had been married before once, the records gone, lost, or not there at all, because that sort of thing wasn't written down anywhere modern men could find. It was in the trees and in the snow melting into the earth a thousand years off.

It was a handfasting ceremony and he holds up a sword with a ring on its end. He dances and he remembers old gods that were just stories now.

*

When Anna brings Jerome to the house, he balks, because it has been a human lifetime since they've seen each other and he has a new name. He holds himself smaller than he is. He has more tattoos than the last time he had seen him. Robert is wary of shaking his hand, because he doesn't know what destruction it could hold for them.

"This is Jerome Boateng, he helped me catch those muggers." Fate always had a way of drawing them together and Anna was always an agent of good.

Dinner is unusually silent and Robert glances at Jerome far too many times to be healthy. He wants to know if he can remember. They have never walked away from each other for this long. They had never gotten a serious head injury before either.

Dessert is chocolate cake that sticks in his throat, lodged between all the meaningless turns of phrase that he could start conversations with to act like a stranger to the man that filled in his own edges. Robert is needlessly angry, scraping the fork against his plate that he isn't aware of the wine glass exploding to his right. The others follow and he looks to Jerome accusingly.

_See what we've done now. You've ruined my cover. You've ruined everything I wanted to hide._

Anna jumps when the vase shatters, pulling water and glass down onto the table like gravity had become too heavy for it. Robert is dizzy. His wrists ache and there is an ugly pressure against his skin. It had only taken forty-five minutes for the havoc effect to take place. Two chairs away and forty-five minutes, it was laughable.

"Get out," he shouts over the noise of rumbling. An earthquake wasn't a common occurrence on the east coast. He needs to put space between him and Jerome. He starts to go to the farthest edge of the house, and Anna isn't sure who to follow but takes a step towards him before Robert motions her back to the door where Jerome is leaving.

*

Anna is quiet. Robert is loud with his body, his entire being sending signals like it was unfurling everything he had kept inside for more than a decade, perhaps more than a century. He is thrumming with some feeling like relief but it isn't, he knows. It isn't a release or a goodbye to his problems. Anna is looking at her hands as if she cannot recognize herself or the world around them had skewed slightly with the confession.

The best words he can use is, "we were meant for each other." Were is the important part because no one in the world could fault Robert for leaving Jerome behind. Not when it meant natural disasters left in their wake, not when Robert could lose the only man who understood, who had an inkling of the man he was supposed to be.

(But he didn't. Jerome doesn't remember and he swallows the truth down like a bitter drink)

"Do you love him?" Anna's lips aren't tight around the edges. She doesn't react with the ferocity Robert expected. Her sky-colored eyes gaze into him and poke at some shadowed part of his heart. There isn't any accusation in her voice. They are out in the patio and the wind blows gently enough to topple him.

He is crying.

"Yes." All of the guilt at leaving Jerome on the street and running like a criminal, hiding his past, hiding everything that made him the other half of the man that had been in their dining room a short few hours ago, all of it came out in that single word.

Robert had never doubted his devotion until he had stepped away from Jerome like every other time and lost the man he once knew. Leaving him had saved his life but at what cost? Robert took their persons for granted until the very moment they were assaulted, walking away from the cinema.

Jerome remembered nothing but what his body felt was reflexive, saving people and being a force of good while Robert stayed in anonymity. Jerome was everything he had been but not at all the same. How can he explain the countless lives they've lived orbiting each other close enough to touch, but never enough to _be enough_

"You have to help him. We can fix this." Anna is brushing away the tracks left on his face, cradling him like she were the one able to break him with a push of a hand. Robert shakes his head.

"There is no way to fix it."

*

Being faced with the reason he carried out the penance of being an EMT painted everything he did a shade more grey. Robert did not have a smile for the old woman who had fallen down her steps. He did not have a friendly chat with Linda at reception and everyone seemed to know something was beneath his skin enough to make him reserved and off-putting. He carried out his work until Joseph told him he had to take his sick leave with no argument.

"You are going to burn out at the rate you're going. I understand you want to help, but you deserve some down time. Sometimes, we get wrapped up in this daily bustle of lives in our hands and don't live our own. Go take a vacation with your wife, yeah?"

Robert smiles gratefully, trying not to feel brittle under the weight of Joseph's hand on his shoulder.

Lives in his hands were the least of his worries with Anna convinced he had to fix things with Jerome. She didn't stop telling him she loved him every night and she didn't hold the past against him, but Robert was tired of having the same conversation over and over again.

"I'm only human, but I get the huge sacrifice you've made for him, Robert. It's time to let it go. You deserve to be happy." Anna is serious with her hair still damp from the shower, tucked into the duvet up to her waist. Robert drags her to his side, caging her with his arms, chest bare but radiating warmth. He sighs into her hair.

"I am happy, Anna. You're my wife. Jerome deserves to be Jerome. He doesn't want the remembrance of suffering, because more often than not that's what we had. Most of our lives were not easy and together, they ended in bad luck all around."

Anna weaved her arms under his and made a disapproving hum. He nuzzles into her shoulder, the scent of her skin and soap soothing old ghosts.

"I know you weren't always safe, obviously by the scars, but there must be moments that were good. Moments you want him to have at least second-hand and I know the very universe hates when you're next to each other so I can help relay the message. Let me do this for you Robert, please."

"I know you'll keep asking if I say no. I guess it'll be an exercise for my own memory. Where should I start?" She shrugged under his chin.

"Your favorite memory with him."

*

He was Matteo and Jerome was Giovanni. It was some time in the late Renaissance. He was a merchant who lived a town away from the darker-skinned man. The distance and time they could spend together had been dwindling, but they still tried their hardest to maintain some relationship with stolen moments.

It was Carnival and Venice was lit with excitement. Matteo had high-browed mask already tied and his costume ready, draped in a cloak. He was an old Pantalone wandering the streets, drinking in the air like wine. Nobody cared about who was who or what they were when the celebrations began. A peasant harlequin grabbed his wrist and dragged him into a cobbled path no wider than the two of them shoulder to shoulder.

"Demone mio, perché avete preso me?" Matteo grins under the half-mask when Giovanni fumbles with the knot, making it tighter instead of loosening it. He shoves it back, careful to not lose it in the darkness that shadowed them.

"Must I give you up for Lent too, Matteo?" They breathe each other's air before succumbing to the high of the night and Matteo does not hear the earth try to shake them apart or the clouds start to rumble so he presses the taller man deeper into the shadows, taking his gloves off to feel brocade and warm skin beneath.

After the madness is satisfied, he touches Giovanni's lips with cold fingertips before tracing his own in a mock of a kiss, the masks back on their faces. It is a farewell brought too soon.

The fireworks have begun to light the sky with color, but the noise is all too familiar to not take as a warning sign. They take a moment with hands clasped together to watch the smoke drift and part ways once more.

Later, much later, Matteo is called a heretic, driven out of town, lashed, and stripped of all his wealth. Giovanni's house is burned down but they cannot connect the incidents.

* * *

 

Jerome Boateng didn’t know his name, wasn’t sure where he came from but his body had the answers. He had never made fun of Marco’s tattoo because if he had the forethought to do the same, he would’ve known his actual name.

Secretly, he thinks his name suits him and is a better fit than whatever other name he could think of in the silence of sleepless nights. Boateng after the nurse that took care of him, that gave him a home after his accident and Jerome because she had always wanted a son to name.

“I suppose we could go through a whole book of baby names and never get some recognition from that brain of yours. Funny how life works out in the strangest ways.” Martha smiles with her whole face, wrinkles prominent and beautiful.

She hadn’t even batted an eyelash when he discovered his secret.

“God gives and takes. The only thing I can tell you is some people have the gift of healing and others are a little more special.” She laughs over dinner for two and Jeopardy softly humming in the background. Jerome knows Martha is singular in the world and he is grateful for her wisdom every day.

“No one knows the path their life will take but you can always do a little good with what you’ve got.” Jerome held to that notion after Martha passed. He didn’t want to bring attention to himself but if he patrolled the streets of bad neighborhoods in his free time to find some perspective and beat reason into some unsavory people, then that was his choice of using what he had for good.

Jerome felt right at home guarding his small part of the world but he wondered why an amnesiac with super powers wouldn’t be missing somewhere out there.

*

“Agyenim” is scrawled across his forearm and Marco calls him Aggie enough times for it to become his unofficial nickname at work. He is annoyed at first before realizing Marco needled at people he liked and only used a saccharine smile for customers and people he absolutely detested.

The boy was as backwards as you could get but Jerome thought he was a funny drunk who didn’t know when to give up trying to drink him under the table. Marco was also one of the few people who knew what he could do and did do in his spare time.

“You’ve got Batman ethics and Superman strength, why the hell would I mess with that? I’m obviously the better-looking sidekick in this scenario.” Jerome knew Marco was secretly a book-lover, but comics were his one and only.

When Mario started working with them and had dubbed him “Boa”, Marco had been outraged.

“I’ve got best friend rights over that sort of thing. Who the hell does he think he is, showing up out of the blue, reorganizing the stock boxes “more efficiently” and giving you another nickname? Fuck him.” Jerome hadn’t pointed out that Marco was following a popular formula in any storyline with an abrasively affectionate character.

His world consisted of vigilantism and a day job in a bookstore turned hangout place with enough dead trees to make a forest. Mats had painstakingly carved a strange little spot for anyone who preferred to imagine other worlds over reality.

Jerome had gotten glasses with him after his boss had noticed his slight squint when reading. Marco had called him Clark Kent for a week before he got bored and picked another fight over Marvel versus DC with a customer.

Names were important to know who was an enemy or a friend in comic books. Jerome thought it applied to real life also.

*

Anna was uncomfortably beautiful to him. She was friendly and could kick Marco’s ass to kingdom come, but being married to Robert Lewandowski put a definite ‘don’t touch the art’ warning sign on her.

“She’s hot and your conflicted boner is so normal, it’s boring. Is the ring carrier at least as hot as she is? Because if not…” Marco waggles his eyebrows and Jerome decides to bench the conversation before other ears heard the gossip.

Jerome couldn’t get Robert’s voice out of his head. He is half-certain he knows the particular cadence even if he would call out any other name, but Jerome waves it away as wishful thinking. He had been searching for someone to recognize him for such a long time and to find it with someone at arm’s length would be a lot more painful than any story would tell.

The problem with his past is that no one came for him in the hospital. Jerome doesn’t think he would be a deplorable enough person to not have anyone care for him but maybe his past self was a lonely man.

In this life, he had Martha and Marco and everyone else who said hi to him frequently enough at the store and he figured his new self shouldn’t dwell.

When Anna started frequenting his workplace, he felt like static was constantly building under his skin. At first, he thought it a casualty of circumstance. Anna had always looked fresh and energetic when she came in on Wednesdays. He assumed it was on her way from the gym or wherever she went to keep up her fitness.

But then she started talking to him as he reorganized shelves and took his mandatory breaks. Mats had even thought they were involved at one point before he cleared the situation up.

“Robert told me Agyenim means great one of God. It’s Ghanaian right?” Jerome bites his lip and nods. Sometimes Anna had a way of phrasing things that made him think of his initial hope, but Robert had never come around with Anna and he had assumed he kept his distance for a reason.

A reason that rhymed with Jerome being unattached and friendly with his wife. The one time they had met had been strange and unsettling, and Robert didn’t seem happy with Jerome being there. Besides, if he had known Jerome, the man wouldn’t pull any punches.

*

Robert came in on a dreary day and Jerome had been called over to the nutrition and health section by a gobsmacked Marco.

“That’s not fair. I know you’re the hero and all but hot marrieds? I might as well resign myself to a tryst with the boss’ husband to spice up my sidekick role.” Jerome kicked him and Marco hissed out in pain.

Jerome didn’t feel the static of Anna around him because Robert was a whole different category. He was an electrical storm in the middle of the book shelves and Jerome was completely at his mercy.

“Anna told me you usually worked around this time. I have to talk to you, alone, but not here.” His expression isn’t angry. Jerome’s body is still caught in the strange magnetism Robert exudes that he doesn’t know when he started leaning in. His eyes are a completely different shade from Anna’s own blue. Hers were the sky in April without a cloud and his were the sea, rolling waves barely restrained.

He doesn’t know what it would take to calm the ocean, but he wants to find out. Jerome shakes his head at the thought.

“About what?” Robert looks at his watch and Jerome takes in the whole picture of him standing in his workplace wearing a suit and looking at him like he could swallow him whole and spit out the bones.

But he wasn’t angry, he was just _intense_.

Jerome would say anybody else, anyone who didn’t go out after a 9 to 5 to willing go after petty criminals would have their fight or flight response go haywire in such close quarters with the Lewandowski man, but Jerome was Jerome.

“The past, your past specifically and I suppose the future too. I’ll call you after I get out of work.” Jerome doesn’t know how he knows he shouldn’t touch him but he wants to stop him, wants to surprise him anyway and grab the skin of his wrist to stop him from walking away. It isn’t fair that Robert is dangling everything he wants in front of him like a carrot on a stick.

*

Marco tells him to be careful. Mario is the one brandishing the threat of action and Jerome can’t concentrate on doing coffee orders for the rest of the day.

Robert brings Anna along and Jerome doesn’t know what to say because the meeting place was in Canada, which meant both of them knew his secret and what he was capable of doing. Robert is dressed down and Anna has a timer in her pocket.

“We can’t stay in the same spot for long. I don’t know why you didn’t think of that but I propose we keep moving so whatever makes you guys tick doesn’t explode in one place.” Robert shifts a little awkwardly.

“I told you, we need a refractory period. Right now we’re as vulnerable as we can get without something or someone trying to kill us. Moving might not be an option after a few minutes.” Jerome is clearly out of the loop and that flares his usually dormant temper.

“Is someone going to explain what’s going on or am I just here to look pretty?” Anna apologizes without taking her eye off the timer.

“Robert,” she nudges him and Jerome sees reluctance on the man’s face enough to realize he won’t like the explanation.

“I knew you. I was there when you had the accident.” He crosses the small distance between them and punches Robert. It hurts him for once, probably as much as it hurts Robert. He’s starting to piece some ideas together. Anna tugs him back when it shouldn’t be possible and she takes advantage of the surprise to pull him further away

“Okay, that was deserved but now you have to take a step back. Both of you, keep walking back and have a conversation about this instead of a fight.” Robert’s nose looks broken and crooked but he sets it with a pinch. Jerome remembers he is an EMT and hates him for it because he didn’t even try to save him. He didn’t even visit.

“You were--we were leaving the theatre when these racists pigs cornered us. Our abilities dwindle as we stay near each other and bad luck always follows. I didn’t think--you were bleeding so much I couldn’t stem it.” They kept taking steps back like a bizarre dueling ritual.

“Why didn’t you come find me?” Robert closed his eyes and Jerome has the urge to shake him.

“I thought it was because you would get better. As we’re apart we get stronger, we regain everything. I thought if I left you like every other time our lot in life struck, you would be fine, but even afterwards, I couldn’t make myself go back and I don’t know if you would have recovered your memory if I did. Even now, I could tell you a million thing to jog your memory but its up to your brain to heal.”

“My memory isn't the problem.” Jerome is shouting. “It wasn’t your fucking decision to keep that from me. Whatever we had, whatever relationship there was between us. It’s over. I’ll stay far enough away for you to not use your damn powers for anything like always.” He spits out completely on the mark with Robert’s habit of inaction.

“Jerome, I’m sorry, but there’s more to this than that.” Anna has more remorse on her face than Robert and Jerome wants to laugh because what kind of world would bring them together to throw this into his face.

“I don’t want your pity, Anna. Your husband has said enough.” Jerome leaves before anything else happens.

* * *

 

Anna keeps coming to the bookstore but Mario and Marco have successfully buffered their interactions to a minimum until she does something completely unexpected. She kisses him, not a peck on the cheek either.

He forces himself away from her and he is almost, almost tempted to kiss her again.

“What are you doing? You’re married.” He says through his teeth. Mats would probably never believe him again if someone said he was making out in the stacks like some of their teenaged patrons were wont to do.

“Yes, I’m married to your bonehead of a soulmate. You left before I kicked Robert but trust me, I did. I understand that wasn’t exactly the best introduction to the idea but words weren’t getting through to you and your friends are worse than bees, always around to take you away. So please, give him another chance.” His fingers curl reflexively and Jerome wishes he could forget the feel of the hair framing her face and the softness of her lips.

He wonders if there’s any merit to another knock to the head.

“This,” he gestures between their bodies. “isn’t how it works and you don’t have to kiss me to get me to listen to your husband. I’m still working through the fact that he’s known about me this entire time.” Anna’s hand comes up to cup his cheek but a throat clearing behind him makes him flinch away.

It’s Marco coming to the rescue.

“It’s fine. I’m fine. Go back to the desk.” Marco raises an eyebrow but stays thankfully silent before turning away.

“I didn’t kiss you as a bargain. I kissed you because I wanted to. I heard Robert’s stories about this great man with many names and I wanted to know.” She licks her lips deliberately. Jerome blinks and focuses on the titles behind her head.

“I wanted to kiss the lips that have kissed my husband’s and I don’t regret it because I know you’re still the same person deep down, just different up here,” She touches her temple and smiles.

“You’re both caught up in the past when the future is so much brighter. I know Jerome and I’ve heard about every other incarnation of you but that doesn’t change what’s in here.” She rests a fingertip on his chest. He takes her fingers in his hand and ignores his beating heart.

*

Robert hadn’t skirted around the details of his relationship with Jerome but implementing them in his life with Anna was different. It was relief and confession all at once.

“Tell me about Egypt.” She had her favorites and this was one of them. She said his eyes changed with certain time periods, certain memories. Robert’s head was on her bare stomach as she carded her fingers through his hair.

“They loved him. People fell in love with him so easily. I was always jealous of that. He fit right in; he belonged in the heat and sand with gold on his arms. His coronation brought the lands fertility and years of feasts, my golden _Nekheny_ had the whole river at his beck and call.” Anna looked down at him with hooded eyes.

“Including you,” she phrased it as a question but the tone was heavier.

“Especially me. I was the foreign god of the lands that could swallow a man without a sound. I was violence and anger tamed by the god-king.” Robert’s voice was rough.

Veles and Perun, Adad and Shamash, Sutekh and Nekheny. All opposing forces forever fighting but necessary to the creation of life. It is a tale as old as time. Love and destruction was the result of their union.

“Egyptians believed there was powerful magic in sex.” He distracts himself by tracing patterns on her skin. This was his present, Anna’s curves under his hands and mouth. There is no brand on his soul, no claim anyone can see with names he doesn’t use anymore but he imagines if souls were immutable things, Anna would have been beside them as a queen.

“Do you believe in magic?” She is amused as he trailed kisses down her navel. As if he was not a product of unbelievable, impossible things.

“I think I can make a case for it.” He smiles into her skin. Robert truly feels powerful only when he is making her fall apart under his touch. So maybe he does believe in magic, if only between their bodies.

*

He tries not to stare because that is obviously a bruise on her collar. He does his best to not entertain any embarrassing thoughts because Anna may not have any superpowers but she knew it got under his skin when she showed up with a self-satisfied air and clothes that showed off her toned legs and more.

Jerome usually didn’t mind the summer months but he needed more than air conditioning in his apartment to battle the heat stirring in his blood.

He is still trying to navigate how he fits into this, them and their marriage and his supposed involvement with Robert even when they couldn’t stand next to each other without the world wanting to tilt its axis.

“Your birthday is in September, well in early fall.” She curls her painted toes into his thigh. The unspoken agreement between them is she tells him crumbs of his past and he doesn’t immediately stop her advances. She brings over the same tupperware with a red cover for a shared lunch and always finds a way to keep her body close to his.

Her smooth legs on his lap are a temptation for his senses but he is and was good at resisting.

“When’s Robert’s?” He is curious if his has a more exact timestamp. Her shrug tells him there are no time markers for people like them.

“August, he’s forgotten the day but always changes his story about Rome so I’m pretty sure he spent most of that time drunk and just takes bits and pieces from whatever he does remember. We celebrate around the middle of the month for parties and friends.”

“When’s yours?” She sits up a little straighter and pins him with a look that makes Jerome feel like the air is superheated around them.

“The 20th of September. Are you going to get me a gift?” She teases lightly but doesn’t move closer and he is somehow disappointed by that. Their interactions lately had devolved into slowing down time by long kisses on the couch with his hands finding purchase under her top. She didn’t push him for more, content with stretching out alongside him until she had to leave.

“You’re thinking too hard again. What’s wrong?” She takes his hand and he fights the rightness of their fingers interlocked. He doesn’t remember falling in love with Robert but he sometimes imagines a darker shade of blue staring at him with all the love Anna has in her eyes.

His disappointment turned to anger and now it was in a limbo state between wanting Robert to show up at his door and pretending he doesn’t exist so his relationship with Anna could register in the spectrum of normal.

“Will this ever feel real?” She frowns and takes a seat on his lap, as if to reassure him this wasn’t a dream by her weight settling on top of him. Jerome leans his forehead on her shoulder and sighs, his breath skittering across the low neck of her blouse.

“What do you need for it to be real?” He holds his tongue because ‘Robert’ isn’t an appropriate response.

“I want you to stay.” Anna shifts to tilt his head back. Jerome doesn’t blink, doesn’t breath half as deeply as he should, because this was a step in a direction he had never taken. This was taking the selfish route for himself.

“I can do that, just let me get a change of clothes out of my car.” The tension in his shoulders drop like a cut wire and he can’t help kissing her, wrapping his arms around her waist.

*

Something changes between them when Anna starts sleeping with Jerome. Robert wants to say ‘fuck the world’ for just a moment alone with him, because tasting him second-hand from Anna fuels a desperation he hadn’t realized was inside him.

He starts researching remote places they could meet without causing too much trouble, but he knows that’s a dangerous game to play with forces they couldn’t control.

Anna is stronger than him mentally and he clings to that now that she knows about everything. The love between them doesn’t change but grows to add a space for another, except that space doesn’t respond to him. He can’t call without the line eventually shorting out and writing letters is too one-sided for him to consider.

He writes the messages through Anna. She is their best common denominator and if he is a little less careful with the force of his fingers and teeth to say _I love you_ a million times over...it is better than nothing yet it is never enough.

“Robert,” she sighs out his name as he traces the map Jerome has left on her body.

“I’m sorry. I can’t--I’m jealous, no it’s envy that you can share his bed and come back to me with his scent on your skin and his taste in your mouth. He loves you and that should be enough.” Anna had saved him from himself all those years ago and Jerome deserved the same. One human to save them both. It was poetic.

“He misses you.” She kisses his temple and snuggles closer.

“You can’t miss what you don’t remember, Anna.” She rests her head on his chest before replying.

“You’d be surprised what your body remembers when your mind doesn’t.” Anna kisses the skin above his heart and Robert feels settled anew. He wants to believe there is truth in her words. His faith in Anna hasn’t ever failed him before.

*

He saves a middle-aged woman from getting hit by a car in the busiest time of the day. Jerome doesn't go back to work afterward. He isn’t even sure if he can, because it was news.

The woman is interviewed on every local channel, her enthusiasm coming through with the rapid Spanish and it becomes national news. "El Santo de Baltimore" is a headline over the weekend. Jerome doesn't know what to do besides call Anna.

"Do you want to do this? You can just disappear, live a quiet life." There is a pause and he knows Robert is there by the line starting to crackle with static.

"You think I can do that, live like Robert without someone like you beside me?" Jerome shuts his TV off because he doesn't want to see the unfortunately placed traffic camera with a wide enough angle to see himself stop a car in its tracks. He at least had the forethought to wear his hood up.

He can't leave the city. He can't leave his friends behind and slink away to pretend he is a normal person. Jerome thinks it was always meant to go this way. He would have eventually been caught by some kid's phone camera or someone would have seen him taking out the trash.

"I'm not leaving." The 'you' is unspoken. There is no other someone. Jerome couldn’t build a life with white picket fences. He wasn’t made for it, not since the mugging and not since he woke up in that hospital bed, maybe he never was.

"Okay.”She takes a deep breath and Jerome wishes he could just go over to the house instead of waiting for a clear sign. “Okay, Robert wants to talk to you. I love you." She sounds like she’s in a tunnel as she signs off with their customary goodbye.

"Are you sure about this? They'll come after you. They'll come after Anna." There are always invisible monsters at Robert’s door but Jerome can’t blame him for it, not with the scars littered on both their bodies. He wasn’t sure if they were the last of their kind in the world but it would stay that way if they maintained their distance.

"I can protect her." He has no doubt about that, even though Anna would protest that she can protect herself.

"But who will protect you." And Jerome suddenly realizes what Robert's role was, all those centuries between them. He can almost touch the iceberg of memories still stuck underwater but the phone dies in his hands and he doesn’t get the chance to ask what Robert wants to do, what Robert will do if something did happen to him.

*

They have had this conversation before. A carefully timed thirty minutes to talk about what could happen. Robert talked about the war with stilted words, the last time he had encountered one of their own. Pairs were more common in the world’s younger years but as time went on, they would stop resisting the urge to be together.

They would fall into a certain sort of madness.

“We’re lucky in a way. Anna is...” Robert looks away because he cannot call it a blessing that Jerome had forgotten him, but the whisper of old tongues persist in his head saying the thunder-struck are lucky by the power of Zeus. He is grateful that he had the strength to walk away.

Bastian had not been as lucky.

“It’s isn’t just Anna.” Jerome looks at him in a way that makes Robert hope. One day with slim chances, he will remember but today isn’t that day. He was sure as much as he begged Anna to not sing the praises he doesn’t deserve, that Jerome knows enough of sacrifice to recognize the twin flame in his soul.

Anna has fought him tooth and nail to not give up on the possibility and some days Robert isn’t sure he wanted Jerome to remember. He wasn’t even sure he remembered all their lives together. He remembered the best and worst parts. Perhaps that was what contributed to the pull, to the final moments of their kind.

Robert didn’t want them to destroy themselves for love. The undeniable draw was always there and he tried his hardest to not stir anything up.

It is with sixteen minutes left on the stopwatch that Jerome crosses the room.

Fifteen when he traces the line of his throat with a finger. Robert wants to say he is too close. They will cause a tsunami in the other half of the world with their proximity. He can’t speak. His words are all buried under the want that surges through him.

“We’re all we have.” He sweeps his jawline with two warm points of contact that end the trail with one on his bottom lip and the dip of his chin. Ten minutes as Robert parts his lips slightly, feeling reason wither beneath Jerome’s dark gaze. It is simultaneously new territory and old motions in action. Jerome smiles warmly, his eyes curving along with his lips.

He steps away with three minutes on the clock and Robert drops into a chair. The living room feeling unnaturally small, he closes his eyes until he hears Jerome fly away.

Hope burns away in his heart. Robert laughs until tears of joy reach the same places Jerome had touched.

* * *

 

The next time Marco sees Jerome after his superhero coming out is when he tells Mats he’s quitting. Marco shoots a suspicious look at Anna when she drags Jerome into another section of the store with linked arms.

"You can't quit. We were gonna have our own comic book and sell it here.” He is very glad he did not stumble on them doing something other than browsing.

"You don’t draw." Jerome points out and Marco scoffs, offended at his lack of faith in Marco’s forethought and plans.

"Sunny does. I'm going to do the storyline because of my superior knowledge of origin stories plus I know the source material." He doesn’t brag. It’s been on his mind for a while since most of the comic books coming out worth their salt are indie publications. If he struck while the iron was hot and no one copyrighted ‘Saint’ as an alias, he would be in business.

"Just don’t put in Anna or Robert." He warns.

"But thats the best part! How am I gonna introduce another hero without your kickass love interest and your love triangle arc, okay polyamorous relationship. I know how to read." He hastily corrects himself. Love triangles were boring anyway. Bad phrasing on his part if their faces were to be believed.

Anna and Jerome had the same sort of unimpressed look and Marco was mentally composing another story arc with Anna secretly having some of the same magic mojo Jerome and Robert had.

“You’ll figure it out. Hmm, I have to go...” And Jerome honest to god, scout’s honor, pulls his shirt back enough for Marco to see dark fabric underneath. Anna kisses his cheek and he runs off to do what heroes do.

Marco gapes long enough to catch flies and points to the space Jerome occupied like he was suffering a stroke. Anna takes pity on him and pats his back with harder smacks than necessary.

“He has a costume already??” His voice gets a bit screechy but he quiets downs when Anna glares. Secrets are not hard for Marco to keep, his excitement is a different story because who else can say their best friend is a maybe alien immortal being who goes out to save kittens from trees and stop train collisions?

“I had some ideas of what would look good. Robert is very good with a needle.” Marco doesn’t want to think of what pain his body will go through if he messes with either of them. It’s just as scary when the guy who can save your life has the ability to end it.

“Would you mind giving us some input? I mean, I know he said not to use you guys, but I think you would be a great role model for female readers.” Marco was a decent sweet-talker. He knew how to sell a book when it was necessary.

“As long as it has a good love story.” She smiles with a mischievous look in her blue eyes and Marco guides her to the back where Mario is opening the new shipment of books.

“Meet our new co-writer, Anna Lewandowska.”

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

[ ](http://imgur.com/rDcwPfv) [](http://imgur.com/wH549Mc)

[Feathers In Our Bed by kkslover9](http://8tracks.com/anon-673679127/feathers-in-our-bed)

**Author's Note:**

> A huge thanks to my friends outside of fandom that put up with me bugging them to read this without any context.
> 
> Another shoutout to the very understanding mods at the minibang for being patient with me and organizing this whole thing. I've never participated in a challenge like this but it was an absolutely lovely (if strenuous) experience. 
> 
> And a huge, huge thank you to my minibang partner, kkslover9 who made that amazing fanmix up there, please do yourselves a favor and listen to it because it gels sooo well with the feel of this fic. It's pretty awesome to get a soundtrack for your work!


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